Beach Colors Page 7

  “Not bad,” Margaux murmured to herself. The painting, as naïve as it was, drew her in, made her wonder what was happening just outside the frame. She riffled through the rest, each getting a little more proficient. The landscapes contained more people, and the people wore more colorful outfits.

  She was taken by surprise by the white wedding dress. It was one of her first fashion renderings. No landscape, no crowd of people. Only one model, one dress, with a wide billowing skirt and a train that ran off the page. It had a princess neckline with little dots Margaux thought must be seed pearls.

  She remembered the day she’d drawn it. She’d been at the library looking over the newest edition of Modern Bride. She must have been ten or eleven. She always sat at the same table and pretended it was her studio. Except there was this older kid who always sat across from her. She didn’t mind. He just read these big fat books and hardly ever moved or made a sound.

  She’d seen that dress in the magazine and pulled out her sketchbook and copied it. The model had Brianna’s long blond hair.

  Margaux smiled and looked at the next sketch. A flounced dirndl of large red, magenta, and pink flowers. The colors should have clashed, but they didn’t. Just popped the skirt off the page.

  Beginner’s luck, she thought as she looked through several more designs.

  She’d come a long way since those early days, but she felt akin to that young girl who’d created them. Colorful. Bold. Optimistic. Joyous. This is where she had started. This was what she was, not the cold, aggressive look she had become.

  Where was her joy? She’d become so serious, so competitive, so intent on staying on top that she’d lost the joy of designing.

  The realization hit her hard. Had that lack of joy been partially responsible for her losing everything?

  No, she argued back. Louis is responsible for your losing everything. You would have recaptured the joy. Maybe when the fall show was over.

  Now, she wouldn’t have that chance.

  She returned the sketches to the portfolio, tied it together, and put it back in the closet. Joy was fine, but it didn’t pay the rent.

  Five

  It continued to rain through the night and Margaux opened her eyes the next morning to a rain-speckled window. She watched dumbly as the drops ran in rivulets down the pane; listened to the continuous splat-splat on the overhang beneath her window and closed her eyes again.

  Nothing had changed. She was at the beach house, broke and out of work, and now it was raining. For a few moments while sketching out on the jetty, she’d felt almost optimistic. When she went to bed last night, she thought she might be on the mend. She fell asleep with colors dancing in her head. But this morning it was gray again. And the energy she’d felt had dissipated. She couldn’t seem to muster the energy to get out of bed.

  Nor did she want to. She just wanted it to all go away. To go back a few months and make things different. To go back a few years and make things different. Do anything to keep herself from being where she was now.

  She pulled the covers over her head. Maybe the next time she woke up, life would be better.

  The next time she woke up, she had to pee. She pushed the covers back and, shivering, trotted across the hall to the bathroom then climbed back in bed. Pulled up the quilt. Put the pillow over her head . . . and stayed awake. She turned over, cleared her mind, but it just filled up again.

  A branch brushed steadily against the cedar shakes of the house. Its swish-swish gradually became a tormenting mantra. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Stupid to have missed the signs that Louis was not her loving husband. Stupid to not keep total control of her business. Stupid to not notice the missing money. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  She stared out the window, the view blurred by the rain. And stupid to sit here and do nothing.

  That was the trouble with being a high-achieving, workaholic A type; it was nearly impossible to sit back and do nothing. Even when she had nothing to do.

  She got up and dragged on a pair of jeans she’d found the day before, surprised to find that they hung loosely on her. Not many thirty-four-year-old women could boast of still being able to fit into clothes they wore in high school. Of course most women hadn’t had their life destroyed in one massive screwup.

  She pulled an old T-shirt over her head and looked down to the word scribbled across her chest. Nirvana. If only. There wasn’t a pair of socks in sight so she stuffed her bare feet into the paint-smeared sneakers and went to the bedroom door.

  A glance over her shoulder told her she was in big trouble. The organized, neat-as-a-pin person she had been was MIA. Her clothes from the night before were lying where she’d left them on the floor by the bed. The dress she’d worn to Mass was crumpled on the seat of her desk chair. The quilt had fallen half off the bed and the sheet was twisted into a knot.

  She turned her back on them and went downstairs.

  She made coffee and stood with her forehead pressed to the window, looking out at the windswept beach. The lifeguard stand rose like a forlorn sentinel, clumps of seaweed twisted around the wooden stilts. A sheet of newspaper tumbled across the sand. Whitecaps chopped up the surface of a gunmetal gray-green sea.

  The coffee grew cold in her mug. She flopped down into the chintz easy chair and ran her index finger around the outline of a huge faded cabbage rose.

  The telephone rang. She let it ring. It would be Jude wanting to have lunch, wanting to be there to support her daughter. But Margaux couldn’t face her right now. It would almost be easier if Jude ranted and railed at her, blamed her for failing. Margaux could deal with that. She deserved it.

  But nothing ever ruffled her mother’s composure or her optimism. Even when Danny died, she went on with life, grieving deeply but inwardly, while she arranged the wake and the funeral, greeted mourners, comforted Margaux and Henry as if a piece of her hadn’t died with her son.

  Margaux had been young enough to think she could make up for Danny’s loss. Be the best she could be, make her parents proud. Of course, she didn’t realize until later that they would be proud of her no matter what she did.

  A shudder racked her body; she drew up her knees and clung to them. God help her, she’d even married Louis thinking of her parents. She thought he could make her family whole again. He even looked a bit like Danny.

  But he wasn’t Danny, he wasn’t even the man she thought she’d married.

  The telephone rang again. She counted the rings—five, six, seven, eight. Then quiet.

  She wasn’t being fair. Jude would worry. She pushed herself out of the chair and called Jude back.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Mom,” Margaux said, forcing a smile into her voice. “Can you believe this weather?”

  “It’s supposed to last for a couple of days. Do you want me to come over? I’ll bring lunch. Or we could go out.”

  “Thanks, but I’m set for food and I’m really busy right now. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Okay, but call my cell phone if I’m not here.”

  Margaux scribbled the number on the telephone pad.

  “Call me.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  She didn’t call Jude back that day or the next. She didn’t answer the phone, but she turned on lights so her mother would know she was okay.

  Two days passed, the rain kept up, Margaux’s spirits plummeted. Her mind raced at night, but when she tried to think of a plan during the day, that same mind went blank.

  She found a copy of Wuthering Heights, but even her favorite story couldn’t keep away her demons. Unfortunately, Heathcliff looked an awful lot like the local police chief. She cried anyway and couldn’t decide if it was for Cathy and Heathcliff or for herself.

  She ran out of milk and drank her coffee black. She ate dry toast. She finished Wuthering Heights. Mostly she jus
t sat in the chintz chair and stared out the window to the shore.

  By the third day of rain, Margaux began to go stir-crazy. She caught herself doodling on the telephone pad. It was a drawing of the window, the column of the front porch and the beach beyond. Funny, she hadn’t even been aware of what she was doing. She put the tablet back on the table and realized there were sheets of paper on the floor around her feet.

  She leaned over and picked up the closest one. The couch and blanket chest that doubled as a coffee table. She reached for another. The floor lamp, its light falling onto the throw pillow, Bless This Home. Another sketch of the oval rag rug, the details picked out in shades of gray with her No. 2 pencil.

  She slid off the chair, gathered all the papers up, then spread them out on the blanket chest. She’d drawn the whole room. The old television set. The escritoire with its curved Queen Anne legs. The fireplace surrounded by speckled bricks.

  She had no memory of drawing any of them. And they were all defined in shades of gray. Like the day. Like her designs. Like her life.

  The light was yellow, the couch a goldenrod tweed, the cabbage roses were pink and green with yellow sepals that had been much brighter many years ago. The rag rug had hints of blue, green, orange, lavender. They were faded, but not gray.

  There was nothing black-and-white about this room. There was nothing black-and-white about the shore. Even the clouds and the gunmetal sea weren’t gray. They had shades of mauve and pink and midnight blue.

  She’d just bought pastels and watercolors a few days before, but her creativity had defaulted to black and white.

  She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t designed in black. Sure there was the occasional silver detail, a hint of gray, but all her designs came from the same palette. She was known for her stark designs; black had catapulted her into the limelight.

  But the designs in her old portfolio proved she hadn’t always been that way.

  Which was the real Margaux? The cutting-edge, black, Tulle-with-a-Bite designer or the fun, vibrant, colorful designer of her girlhood? Margaux had no idea, but suddenly she knew she had to find out.

  She bounded up the stairs two at a time, tore open her closet door. She tugged her suitcase out of the closet, opened it onto the floor. She wrapped her arms around her New York clothes, lifted them out of the closet and dropped them hangers and all into the suitcase, snapped it shut, zipped it up, and rolled it down the hall to another closet and out of sight.

  She was left with a bright red Windbreaker. She sat down on her bed, her hands clasped between her knees, and stared into the closet.

  Besides the Windbreaker, she had two pairs of faded torn jeans, a few stretched-out T-shirts, and flip-flops. She couldn’t make do with that, but she’d be crazy to buy clothes when she didn’t know where her next penny much less paycheck was coming from. On the other hand, she had to start over sometime. And shopping for clothes was as good a place as any.

  She’d be frugal. Besides, she doubted if Crescent Cove Clothiers carried two-hundred-dollar jeans. She’d start with just a couple of pieces to augment her two pairs of jeans.

  She shrugged into the Windbreaker and stopped to check herself out in the dresser mirror. The Windbreaker had a certain retro charm, but her hair . . . It stuck out like a rusted scouring pad and clashed terribly with the red of the Windbreaker. She tried to run a brush through it but it was no-go.

  She found a hair elastic and forced the wild frizz into a ponytail. She looked around for a baseball cap to camouflage the rest. She found one in the foyer closet, next to a huge blue and white UConn umbrella.

  She tucked her ponytail through the hole and pulled the cap down hard over the rest. She snatched up the umbrella and her purse and hurried out to the car.

  She had to lean forward to see past the wipers and through the fog and rain. Slowly, she drove toward town.

  In summer, the rain drove everyone from the beach into the shops, the movie house, the bowling alley. But today without the summer people, downtown was virtually empty.

  That was fine by her. She found a parking place right in front of Crescent Cove Clothiers. They were having their end-of-winter sale and she bought a pair of khaki trousers, a green sweatshirt with a picture of a palm tree on the front, and two packages of crew socks.

  Clutching her shopping bag under the umbrella, she jogged two doors down to a new store in town. They sold two-hundred-dollar jeans. They also appeared to be going out of business. Prices were slashed; the slashes were slashed. Even the price of the two-hundred-dollar jeans.

  She bought several T-shirts in various colors, a blue pin-striped tailored shirt, a pair of navy blue capris, and another sweatshirt, this one in magenta. At the last minute she snagged a skimpy knit dress in shimmery moss green.

  The salesgirl was ecstatic. Margaux was their only customer.

  Margaux was pretty pleased, too. Her whole shopping spree had come to less than eighty-five dollars. She couldn’t think of a single thing in her wardrobe that cost less than eighty-five dollars. Underwear maybe.

  Her stomach rumbled, and for the first time in days, maybe weeks, she was hungry. She turned automatically toward Dottie’s diner but checked herself. She loved Dottie and didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but her new state of optimism was too fragile to test in public.

  She turned down Barton Street where she saw a sign that looked like it might be a sandwich place and took temporary respite from the rain beneath one of the green awnings that seemed to have sprouted up around Crescent Cove. Two large barrel planters were filled with geraniums and a sandwich board by the door announced Granny’s Attic Memorial Day Sale.

  Memorial Day was nearly a month away, but Margaux couldn’t blame them for getting an early start. There didn’t seem to be a lot of foot traffic in Crescent Cove, off season, especially down the side streets, especially in the rain.

  The drops began to let up and she hurried toward her destination.

  There was no green awning over the next door. No flowers, just a window with black lettering, Grace Holcombe Attorney-at-Law, and in smaller letters, Real Estate Agent. Margaux jumped back. How stupid of her; she knew Grace’s office was on Barton Street. But she wasn’t ready to see Grace. She looked like hell. Her hair was frizzy.

  Stop making excuses. Grace wouldn’t care what she looked like. With any luck she might not even be in the office. But she refused to skulk around just to avoid her. She hadn’t seen Grace in years, and now she felt guilty for not making the effort to stay in touch. They’d been best friends, for hell’s sake. Some kind of friend she was. But then the telephone worked both ways. Grace could have called her.

  Well, there was no time like the present. She opened the door to the law office and stepped inside.

  She would have known Grace anywhere. She was just an older version of the wiry, nearsighted kid she’d been when they’d met twenty-seven years before. She was still petite, though her blue-black pigtails and severe bangs had been replaced with a sleek face-frame hairstyle. Her long thick lashes were no longer hidden behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.

  Grace had followed them around one summer, looking so plaintive, that Margaux and Brianna finally took pity on her and let her tag along. She spent the rest of the summer explaining to them why they were lucky to have her as a friend and promised them that when she was a lawyer they could come to her for free.

  Margaux smiled. None of them thought they would ever need a lawyer in those days. Margaux hadn’t even been sure what people hired lawyers to do.

  Now she knew all too well.

  Grace looked up from her computer, squinted at her, and blinked several times.

  “Mags? Margaux?”

  Margaux nodded. Grace jumped up from her chair and raced around the edge of her desk, but drew herself up short just before reaching Margaux.

  “I can’t believe it. What are you
doing here?”

  Margaux’s mouth went dry. She shrugged. “I know I look frightful, but I just wanted to see you.” She gave Grace an awkward hug.

  “You look . . . great.” Grace looked around the tiny office. “Here, sit down.” She reached for a chair. A pile of papers slid to the floor. “Oh hell. I’ll put the closed sign up. Let’s go to lunch. But not Dottie’s. I want you all to myself.”

  “Good. I’m starving. There’s a place at the end of the block that looks nice.”

  Grace flipped a sign over, grabbed a huge overstuffed purse, and scuttled Margaux out the front door.

  “I bet you’re a good lawyer,” Margaux said as she was force-marched down the sidewalk while trying to hold the UConn umbrella over both of them as well as her unwieldy bunch of shopping bags.

  “Thanks. I am, but not a very busy one at the moment.”

  “That’s where the real estate part comes in?”

  “You got it.”

  Margaux shook her head. Leave it to her childhood friend to figure out how to eke out a living in a small town whose populace would rather argue over a beer at Deke’s than go to court, and who for the most part had owned their homes for at least two generations.

  They went to a cute little bakery called Cupcakes by Caroline. Grace had always had a sweet tooth; it looked to Margaux as if that hadn’t changed either. Grace was packing a few extra pounds. Well within the normal limit, Margaux reminded herself. She was just used to anorexic models.

  It turned out that Caroline, who was definitely packing a few extra pounds, also served lunch as well as cupcakes, homemade bread, cookies, and a variety of pastries. They chose a table in a brick alcove and ordered the special. Salad niçoise and mint iced teas.

  “I loved that spread in Vogue last year,” Grace said, reaching for a fresh breadstick and slathering it with butter. “I bought two copies. There was a run on them at Dingley’s Drugs. I had to go all the way to one of those mega bookstores on the highway. I took a copy to Brianna—”

  “Brianna was here?”